Cops probing whether shot fired by Namdhari hit Ponty Chadha

Nov 26, 2012, 01.50AM ISTTNN[ Raj Shekhar ]

Sukhdev Singh Namdhari, accused in Ponty Chadda and his brother murder case, being taken away by an auto-district court in New Delhi.

NEW DELHI: Was one of the bullets that felled liquor baron Ponty Chadha fired by his friend Sukhdev Singh Namdhari? Police sources pointed to this possibility, saying one of the bullets appears to have entered Ponty's body from the front-right. His brother Hardeep, by contrast, was firing at him from the left.

Cops have found signs of Namdhari's licenced pistol being tampered with, said sources. Namdhari, who was sacked as chairman of the Uttarakhand minorities commission, has confessed to having shot three-five bullets during the November 17 shootout, police told the court on Saturday.

A day after investigations into the Ponty Chadha-Hardeep killings were mysteriously taken away from the south district police and handed over to the crime branch, cops say either Namdhari or his PSO, Sachin Tyagi, could have fired the bullet that hit Ponty from the right. The shot may have hit Ponty accidentally as both men seemed to have been shooting at Hardeep, the cops added.

Namdhari's pistol, shotgun seized

Namdhari fired 3-5 rounds from his licenced pistol and his PSO shot another 3 rounds with his carbine but only two of the bullets hit Hardeep. Most rounds fired by the two men were way off the mark, with bullets found various places on the wall, a source said.

The cops on Sunday recovered Namdhari's licenced pistol of 7.62mm calibre (.30 bore), a double barrel shotgun (12 bore), one magazine and five live cartridges from his house in Bazpur, Uttarakhand, where he was taken by a crime branch team. The licences were also seized.

Namdhari was taken to areas around Bazpur and neighbouring Uttar Pradesh. On Saturday night, police released Sachin Tyagi, the personal security officer of Namdhari who was initially picked up for questioning.

Several police officers from the special investigation team of crime branch are raiding places in UP and Uttarakhand to nab the rest of the men deployed by Namdhari at Ponty's farmhouses before the shooting. Around 40 men in Indicas, Altos and a Tempo had barged into farmhouse number 42 in Chhatarpur and G-19 in Kapashera, with the aim of capturing these properties from Hardeep's possession.

A source police were specifically looking for two persons - Satnam alias Satte, who had opened fire inside the farmhouse, and Hardayal, who is a relative of Namdhari.

Meanwhile, the transfer of the case to the Crime Branch at this crucial stage has raised several questions. The Delhi Police has officially described the move as routine, saying the local police unit has other priorities such as maintaining law and order in the district. The transfer would also facilitate investigations which need to be carried out across states, it said.

However, police sources give a different picture. They say cases that have been transferred to a different wing of the organization often get botched because the investigators are not associated with the probe since the beginning. The murder of Shobhit Modi at Vasant Kunj in south Delhi, which had hit headlines last year, is a classic example, the sources said. The case was transferred to the crime branch, which hasn't been able to crack it.

Sources claimed the certain arrests in the case, such as that of Ponty's protocol manager Bhupender Bisht, had not gone down well with a section of the police brass. Later, the arrest of Namdhari, who is well-connected and was the initial complainant in the case, also created controversy among police ranks.

Sources claimed that the Chadha family too had expressed dissatisfaction with the direction of the probe. They added that, from here on, major developments are unlikely in the case.

Police have officially maintained that there are under no pressure and that investigations are being carried out as per the law.

Driver helps cops nail shooting sequence

Ponty Chadha's driver, Raj Dev, has emerged as the main witness in the case, helping cops establish the sequence of events, number of bullets fired and Namdhari's role in the shooting. Police are now certain 18-20 rounds were fired but cannot account for three bullets. "Hardeep fired eight rounds, Namdhari three to five and his PSO, Tyagi, three shots. We are trying to find out who fired the other three to five rounds," said a source.